3rd Annual Tech Showcase Demonstrates Growing Areas of Research

Flurries of activity and sharing of ideas is nothing new at Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley. However, Building 23 and numerous labs around campus buzzed with an extra air of excitement this past weekend as students at the 3rd Annual Tech Showcase proudly put the finishing touches on their CMUSV experience by presenting their research projects before the next day’s graduation ceremonies.

This year’s showcase offered over 40 research presentations and built upon the 10th Anniversary showcase. The judging panel was composed of Bob Iannucci, Distinguished Service Professor at Carnegie Mellon and former CTO at Nokia; David Jensen, CTO of Spoke Software, CMU MS Software Engineering ’11; Kuldip Pabla, Principal Engineer 2 at Samsung Information Systems America; and Brad Chen, Principal Engineer at Google, CMU Ph.D. Computer Science ‘94. The judges reviewed nine posters and demos that were selected as finalists by a faculty subcommittee and had the unenviable task of selecting from the finalists just three winners, for Best Demo, Best Poster, and Best Presentation.

Winning Best Demo was the SweetFeedback team composed of visiting Taiwanese research assistants, Janet Huang, Leonard Tsai, Jimmy Wang, Louis Yu, and Hanchuan Li, advised by Professor Ted Selker. A SweetFeedback gumball machine was set up in the Building 23 lobby, greeting guests with questions such as, “What is Carnegie Mellon University’s mascot?” For those who answered correctly with the answer, “a Scottie Dog,” a sweet treat was dispensed, unquestionably making this demo the most popular among children in attendance.

The Best Presentation award was given to MS Software Engineering student, Borys Boyko, for his project, “Android Room Manager: A Google Calendar Reservation Application.” Boyko developed an Android tablet application that tackles the problem of simplifying and improving the process of room reservations at the Silicon Valley campus. His approach is a readily applicable service that has already been deployed on campus using Android tablets donated by Samsung and Motorola placed next to conference rooms and exemplifies the CMUSV teaching commitment to find solutions to real-world problems. Faculty advisor Patrick Tague praised Boyko stating, “I challenged Borys to design a solution to an ongoing problem we experience on campus. He demonstrated his initiative in defining, developing and testing a practical product that lays the groundwork for future systems.”

The third award, presented for Best Poster, was presented to Jungsuk Kim, a Ph.D. student visiting from Korea advised by Ian Lane. His project entitled, “HYDRA: A Hybrid GPU-CPU Engine for LVCSR,” sought to effectively use resources currently available on multicore and manycore processors for Large Vocabulary Continuous Speech Recognition. Visitors were treated to demonstrations with multiple cars outside the main building.

Boyko, speaking for many of the student researchers expressed appreciation for the opportunities the showcase allows for valuable feedback from industry experts: “The judges challenge us with interesting questions. We explain what we have accomplished in our research, but they aren’t simply content with that information, instead pushing us to ask what else we can do, working with us to come up with ideas for future development of our products.”

Afterward, students, faculty, alumni enjoyed a BBQ celebration while catching up with friends, both old and new. This year’s event was also memorable not just for the high quality of research on display but for the attendance of a real-life Scottie dog, Carnegie Mellon’s mascot, delighting many with his eagerness to pose in countless photos.